With spring just around the corner, most winter-frustrated gardeners begin to drool over the seed catalogs and wonder where pruning shears and pruning saws are stashed. In much of America, we have been deluged with cold weather and just want to get back out there and enjoy some green. This is the time to begin planning and forming a strategy for the next season, deciding what to plant where and what to prune back so that we can enjoy our hopefully soon-to-come spring and summer landscape.
Since the majority of our overwintering shrubs need to be pruned in late winter to early spring – while they are dormant and before the spring weather encourages new growth – this is the time we can get a jump start on summer by beginning cleanup and breaking out the rakes and pruning shears. Since it’s too soon to begin actual planting in many areas, late winter to early spring is the perfect time to do the preparatory work that will free up time for the more fun stuff in the weeks and months to come. This is the time to ensure that we have all of our supplies and equipment ready to go.
Instead of just browsing the gorgeous catalogs and wishing there was something to do out there, late winter and early spring give gardeners a window of opportunity to actually begin active gardening. Once your local nursery has all of those tempting flats of gorgeous annuals in full bloom, it’s generally too late to get out the pruning shears and pruning saws and take control of your perennials and shrubbery.
By the time the spring breezes are blowing on the petunias blooming at the garden center, your shrubs have already taken Mother Nature’s cue and are busy developing and planning new growth of their own. If you wait until this point, they will interpret your trying to coax them into shape with the pruning shears as a random attack. In other words, it will be too much too late.
The keys to successful pruning are to know the plants you are working with and to use good quality equipment. Keep in mind that whether you are trying to coax an azalea bush to give you more blooms or to shape a privet hedge into a box shape, you are fighting nature here.
Plants are living organisms and while they can’t feel pain, they do seen to have a mind of their own and are pre-programed by nature to do certain things and grow into certain organic shapes. If you want them to work with you, you need to inflict the least damage to the plant as is possible. This means, aside from checking the right timing for your particular shrubs, that you use the right tools.
Dull pruning shears will not cut crisply and may leave nasty wounds. Instead of rewarding you with an abundance of new growth, these areas must expend their energy attempting to heal themselves. They become subject to fungal invasions and rot. Instead of producing new shoots, a plant damaged by cheap or worn out pruning shears or pruning saws will quite likely die on you.
It is vital to their life and your future enjoyment of them in your landscape that you invest in and use good quality tools. Late winter is the time to visualize the results you want later in the year and to invest in the proper aids – pruning shears, saws and the like – so that you are ready to get out there on the first great weekend that presents itself.